Building levees of emotion and tearing those bitches down - Explosions in the Sky have never sounded more thrilling.

Reign of Terror is way awesomer [than Treats].

Cooder, like a Keith Richards/Woody Guthrie hybrid, observes [the current political scene] all as a damn shame, with little condescension and oodles of wit.

His words are layers of palpable atmospherics; subtle and pleading at times, worried and demanding at others, mainly steeped in a falsetto that rarely wears thin - note "rarely" - it occasionally causes the eardrums to glaze over.

It's an atmosphere-setting collection, with little in the way of memorable riffs or melodies. But that's the point: Earth has needed to slow its roll for a minute now. Here's the inspiration.

The King Is Dead is ear-openingly different for the Decemberists, but the pretty country-rock might soothe even the hardest of cowboy hearts.

Over time, the Mountain Goats have explored different emotional territory. Here they prove they can still make humble, evocative music.

It's a killer.

The cumulative effect can be like listening to a church choir doing canons while simultaneously crushing OCs on your bicuspids, one at a bloody time.

Instead of wandering into opaque experimentation, as they’ve been known to do in the past, they corral those unruly elements into a series of hummable, memorable tunes.

For all its robust, pristinely recorded eclecticism, Rhine Gold holds together beautifully, thanks to Makrigiannis's angelic tenor, which soothes and stirs in equal measure.

This beautiful disc needs only her sweet muted-trumpet voice and optimistic viewpoint to sail gracefully through its 10 songs.

Man Man fans probably weren't expecting "Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head"–levels of optimism from the happy-titled Life Fantastic, but the vibe on the Philly-based band's fourth album is pretty morbid, even by their standards.

Novelty is only part of what makes pop work, and on Don’t Stop, Annie brings enough of the other stuff--hooks, grooves, and a combination of sass and sincerity--to make you forgive her tardiness.

Yeah, the alternate/alternating track sequence is screwy for the first seven songs or so — Deerhunter build momentum only to lose it. But it gives the album’s backside something of a black-and-white-to-Technicolor moment.

Disorienting at first spin, Wild Smile rewards by reconciling the easily digestible and the weird with each subsequent listen.

The 12 songs are rhythmically warm and appealing thanks to Jay Bellirose’s spare-cymballed drumming and the beautifully knotty guitars of Henry, Bill Frisell, and Greg Leisz.

This New Jersey quartet is one well-oiled muscle, and they flex it to hypnotic effect for 40-plus minutes.

On Kiss Each Other Clean, Beam's muse must have told him to pull back on the reins.

Subdued but not entirely resigned, Mitchell sings in a strong, assured voice that’s still warm and welcoming, though lowered by decades of ecologically unhip tobacco smoke.

The lyrics do little to stand out, but that hardly blights the rest of the experience. And none of the 13 tracks on Nothing Hurts tops the 2:45 mark, so it’s a speedy listen.

If at times the album works as dancefloor aerobic-pop, its true utility is in providing the soundtrack for two people to get lost in the vortex dance of each other's eternal-seeming embrace.

This may be the most uncharacteristic of his albums, but by venturing outside his comfort zone, Hawley has in turn made his best.

Who's Feeling Young Now? strikes a perfect balance between flash and form, running blistered fingers on otherwise scholarly templates.

Un Día takes everything the former Argentine TV star used to establish her musical style in the 12 years since she released her first album--her sometimes grainy voice, folk-leaning acoustic guitar, odd sampled sounds, and an impossible degree of looping-- and shows Molina’s music in its weirdest, most mesmerizing, ideal version of itself.

Speech Therapy has a lot going for it: it's a solid confessional debut about the singer's experiences as a black South Londoner, the backing tracks are inventive jazzy jams played by sympathetic musicians, and the upshot is an uncompromising suite of female-empowerment snapshots.

Their third album sticks to the Neil-Young-meets-Gram-Parsons folk rock of their first two but finds Sykes and [Phil] Wandscher experimenting with rockier blues and psychedelia.

His crafty postmodern bubblegum is a treat well worth chewing.